The present invention relates to a recording and reproducing apparatus and a recording and reproducing method, suitable for application to, e.g., a video camera.
In recent years, recording and reproducing apparatus are in widespread use which apparatus are compatible with randomly accessible recording media such as a digital versatile disc (DVD), a semiconductor memory and a hard disc drive (HDD). Such recording and reproducing apparatus can easily and quickly cue a photographed image recorded in a recording medium.
Of recording and reproducing apparatus of this type, for example, a general video camera manages generally video information of photographed images in the unit of scene, and cues each scene by using management information on each scene. A video camera of this type can set a plurality of chapters in one scene, and can cue each chapter.
A scene means a series of images recorded during a period from when a user depresses a record button to start photographing to when the user depresses again the record button to stop photographing. The number of scenes increases each time photographing is made upon depression of the record button. The chapter means a delimiter of images in one scene.
A user of a video camera can know quickly the contents of each scene by reproducing image information recorded in the recording medium by sequentially cuing each chapter.
However, if the number of chapters set in a scene is large, a user of the video camera is required to repeat a cue operation as many times as the number of chapters set in the scene, in order to confirm the contents to the last scene. There arises therefore a problem of much work and long time.
JP-A-06-165009 discloses techniques of efficiently knowing the contents of a scene by calculating a priority order of each frame from the type of button manipulation during photographing, and reproducing a frame having a higher priority order.